| |  | Get Low is the story of Felix Bush (Robert Duvall), a hermit living in the Tennessee backwoods during the Great Depression. Felix has sequestered himself in exile for forty years, a self-imposed punishment for an unknown sin in his past. Bent and grizzled with age, he's become the subject of local rumor with a boogeyman reputation the crazy-haired, shotgun-toting Felix encourages. But what is this mysterious secret that Mr. Bush keeps and it is a really bad enough to justify a forty year withdrawal from society? The film doesn't answer that question until the last ten minutes, by which time perhaps no explanation is sufficient to support the suspense created in the beginning of the movie.
Felix takes an interest in his own legend, enlisting the proprietors of the local funeral parlor Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) and his assistant Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black) to throw him a funeral party so that he can hear the townspeople tell all their stories about the eccentric Mr. Bush. Quinn, who is not a particularly moral man and strapped for cash, gleefully agrees to throw Bush a funeral while he's still alive. Bill Murray is quietly brilliant in the role of Quinn and his unscrupulous business practices ("Ooh, hermit money. That's good.") are a highlight of the film.
We're clued into a possible solution to the mystery when Felix is re-introduced to an old friend named Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek). The two appear to have a romantic history and both have a connection to Mattie's long-deceased sister. Adding to the complications, Mattie also seems to be seeing Frank Quinn. This is where the film loses much of its interest, dissolving into a traditional melodrama. Instead of zeroing in on the quirks of the various characters and their struggle to come to grips with their complex and interconnected pasts, the movie is overwhelmed by hackneyed sentimentality. The ending in particular is marred by a conventional denouement; a shame which threatens to overshadow Robert Duvall's heart-wrenching monologue at Felix's funeral party.
Director Aaron Schneider previously won an Oscar for his short subject film Two Soldiers. Get Low often feels like an overly long short film; there just isn't enough plot to justify its feature length. The movie hinges on the reveal of Felix's past misconduct, a climax that is drawn out for much too long and undercuts the dramatic impact of his reveal. Although purportedly the story of a true American eccentric, Get Low delivers a disappointingly conventional tall tale. | | | | Micmacs, or Micmacs a tire-larigot in the original French, is a nearly untranslatable slang idiom meaning roughly something like "troublemakers" or "shenangians". Like its title, the plot of this film is equally bizarre. The film opens in North Africa where a soldier is blown to bits by a land mine. Cut to France where a young boy mourns the loss of his father. Fast forward thirty years and that same boy, now a man named Brazil (Dany Boon) working at a video store in Paris, is improbably struck in the skull by an assassin's errant bullet. On the flip of a coin, the doctor decides to leave the bullet in his head. You see, Brazil's survival chances were fifty-fifty: he could have easily died during the operation. Of course, the bullet could migrate into his brain at any moment, causing instant death. To add insult to injury, upon his release from the hospital, Brazil discovers he has lost his job and his apartment. He becomes a street performer and is taken in by a band of scavengers and inventors who live in a trash heap. The group includes an ex-con named Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle) and a prickly contortionist (Julie Ferrier). Together, they plot revenge against the two arms manufacturing companies that made the land mine that killed Brazil's father and the bullet that nearly killed Brazil.
If you thought it was exhausting just reading that synopsis, imagine watching the movie. Jeunet (Amelie, A Very Long Engagement) is known for his over-stuffed plots and dizzying visual inventiveness. Unfortunately, Micmacs has neither the wit and charm of Amelie, nor the lush romanticism of A Very Long Enagement. As Brazil, Dany Boon is an inert and un-engaging protagonist, perhaps necessarily because of his head injury, but the film never fully recovers from the lack of charm and depth at the center of the story.The supporting cast tries to compensate and they are all admirable weirdos, including a man who speaks only in cliches and another trying to make the Guinness Book of World Records for human cannonballing.
But all of this eccentricity adds up to nothing. The arms dealers are just as odd as our heroes (one collects celebrity body parts), but the film stalls when it tries to confront the dealers with the atrocities they've committed in North Africa and around the world. Such serious business has no place in such a silly film as this. And that's the main issue with Micmacs: there is no sense of reality. It clearly wants to take place in the real world, where the war in Afghanistan is ongoing and office workers spend hours a day on YouTube, and yet, the characters inhabit a green and gold-tinted Paris where there is never any traffic (except when the script calls for it) and Brazil can plan and execute elaborate surveillance schemes with scavenged equipment. Ultimately, Micmacs is a disappointment for Jeunet fans and probably just too weird for mainstream audiences. | | | | If you've seen the commercials and trailers for The Kids Are All Right, you probably think it's a comedy. Why wouldn't you? The happy, smiling faces of beautiful, upper middle class people wining and dining in the brilliant California sunshine; it's the feel-good indie of the year! Well, not exactly. The plot sounds like a wacky sitcom premise: Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and her half-brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson) have two moms, flaky but maternal Jules (Julianne Moore) and breadwinning doctor Nic (Annette Bening). Each mom had one kid each using donated sperm. Now eighteen and eligible to find out about her father, Joni contacts the sperm bank as a favor to Laser, who's longing for some fatherly guidance. Their donor/father it turns out is Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a hairy, earthy, motorcycle-riding organic gardner and restauranteur who conveniently lives nearby.
What follows is funny, but not nearly as cheerful and sunny as the posters advertise. The interactions between the kids and newly-discovered dad are awkward in the extreme; Laser seems disappointed Paul is such a laid back hippy stereotype, while Joni finds his freewheeling lifestyle refreshing and inspirational in contrast to her own academic rigors (a star student in high school, she is leaving within a month for college). Although both kids are willing to accept Paul into their life, Nic and Jules' reactions are more complex. At first, Nic is hurt that Joni and Laser didn't consult them before contacting Paul, but it gradually becomes clear she's more threatened than upset. Jules, on the other hand, is wary but open. When Paul offers to hire her for some landscaping (a contract Jules' upstart business needs desperately), she happily accepts.
I won't divulge any more of the plot, but it gets messy. Director Lisa Colodenko and her co-writer Stuart Blumberg avoid many of the cliches that could have easily sidetracked the story. In a small film of this type, where the honesty of the writing and performances determine its success, cast and crew hit all the right notes. |
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